2010-08-15: Sweating to the Hologram Robots
Summary: Cyclops and Psylocke get some exercise, Danger Room-style Location: Danger Room Participants: Cyclops, Psylocke Rating: PG-13 for Betsy's outfit. Seriously, totally redonk. BLAST! BLAST! BLAST-BLAST-BLAST! The fate of being a digital clay pigeon seems to be a rather cruel one, at least as long as Scott Summers, fearless leader and eyeball markmen, is in the room. Standing in the center of the room, a randomized series of released "discs" that fly over the ceiling of the room are blasted into binary oblivion in regular intervals. After another flurry of discs (BLAST-BLAST-BLAST-BOOM-BLAST), a soothing woman's force trickles out of the intercom in the room. "Round 5 results: 100%, 30 discs destroyed. Fastest strike time, .21 seconds. A new record. Shall we being Round 6, Mr. Summers?" Scott nods his head, waits a second and then remembers that voice confirmation is needed for this program. "Yes, begin round 6." A soft ding affirms his decision, and then? BLAST-BLAST-BLAST! Round 6 runs through its course, but when it ends, the sound of the feminine computer is accompanied by another sound: a polite round of applause. Off to one side, Betsy Braddock, the ninjatastic Psylocke, claps her hands in what is either a sincere or sarcastic gesture -- with her reserved demeanor and dry sense of humor, who can ever be sure? Still, it seems to come from a genuine place when she comments, her voice speaking in a somewhat muted English accent: "Most impressive, Scott." Because she's the sort of woman who does things like this, Betsy's gym attire is nearly as scandalous as her costume: a top that resembles a sports bra more than anything else, and shorts that only barely count as such. Even her sneakers are low-top. As Betsy advances toward Scott, her clapping stops, and she trills, "Most... impressive... indeed." “Begin Round 7,” Scott commands, no so much as glancing towards Betsy for the moment, because his attention (BLAST-BLAST) is centered on the action above his head (BLAST) but partially because he's afraid of what the teep might pick up of he looks at her for too long. He is dedicated to Jean, but he is also a man. (BLAST-BLAST-MISS) Something about Psylocke's voice is a bit distracting though, as he cracks a small smile. "You're trying to throw me off, just ruined my round," he accuses her, mostly teasingly as he gets back into his rhythm, turning around to get a disc that was shot out behind him. "Which, I will remind you, is both cheating and unsportsmanlike," he says, missing two more discs as his round peeters out. As the computer recites his less than stellar stats for that round, he glances towards Psylocke with a half-grin. "Alright, I'm good. You got any warm up exercises you wanna do?" "If you're being thrown off by a little friendly encouragement," Betsy notes, lips spreading into a small but sly smile, "then I'm absolutely terrified to see how thrown off you'd be by, say, some maniac trying to kill you." The smile grows wider still when Cyclops offers his own half-grin, but only for a second -- Betsy's had her little jab and there's no need for her to gloat about it, of course. "Why, Scott. I thought you'd never ask." Betsy glances upward, and as she does so, she begins stretching herself out. It's a rather flagrant showcase of her agility, but it's a necessary warmup nonetheless. "Computer, change program to... oh, give us some robots, will you? Enough to make it interesting for two." Easing up out of a stretch, Betsy's eyes flick to Scott's masked gaze -- "If you're willing to join me, that is." Scott takes a few steps back, giving Betsy all the room she needs to stretch out. And sure, he watches. What of it? Is that a crime? IS IT? Maybe he even enjoys watching. Again, he's a man, with eyeballs. That shoot lasers. “Maniacs and madmen I'm used to. Friends? The final frontier," he explains, before blinking behind his visor. "Uh, sure, robots works," he says, pushing off the wall and walking (perhaps a bit stiffly; didn't he just warm up?) towards the center of the room where Psylocke is, setting his back to hers. "Program ready. Run?" Scott speaks his confirmation code, and he and Betsy suddenly have a few friends. Namely ten 15' tall robots in a circle around the two mutants, with a generally hulking form with big arms, big legs, bulky torso and tiny heads. They start to lumber forward slowly, groaning their discontent with their mutant prey. "Think Kitty programmed these," Scott quips before shooting a blast of energy in the center of the robo-monster's torso. The robot, in turn, remains stark still. "And made them pretty tough," he says before blasting out its legs, causing it to fall over and start the slow process of rolling over to push its bulky frame back up. Betsy's back bumps against Scott's -- but the touch only lasts half a second, as the telepathic X-Man-turned-assassin-turned-X-Man tenses her body into one of the many combat-ready postures instilled into her by the training of the Hand. Against robots, she can cut loose with those tactics. After all, it's not murder if it's a robot, and that's the law. "Oh?" Betsy responds to the comment on the robot brigade's programmer. She's currently bounding up one of the robots' arms, deftly evading an attempt to shake her off, and doing so with considerable grace to spare. "Well, tall, burly, and made of metal -- they certainly /are/ Kitty's type," the ninja jokes, straddling the back of one robot's head and, in doing so, baiting another -- so that when it attempts to smash her good, it just ends up punching in its fellow robot's skull, because Betsy's backflipped out of the way. Tall, burly, made of metal, yes. Terribly clever? Nooooot really, as the robot, not caring for Betsy making herself a hat atop his body well, swinging his giganto fist, missing the target without much trouble. He does, however, clobber his buddy. The lesson learned here is that you do NOT want these things to hit you, as the head is knocked clear off cleanly. The body crumples before exploding, the remain fading away into digital nothingness. "I'll tell her you said that," Scott says before breaking into his own run, jumping atop his down robot and giving it a good blast at the neck, snapping the head clear off. The body disappears as well, as Scott turns his attention towards a line up of three other robos. "Betsy, might wanna move to one side," he warns before shooting off a full-blast attack. Still, to Scott's surprise, his blast doesn't tear very far through the shell of the robot; what it does do it push it back to ram into the one behind it, and then the two hurtling towards a third. The robo-dog-pile in turn is not barreling in the direction of Betsy, and unless she moves her tail, she is going to find herself on the bottom of it. Very ow, though she has plenty of time to get out of the way if she starts ninja-flipping now. "Scott, you /gossip/," Psylocke accuses. Even as he's warning her, Betsy's already moving, cartwheeling out of the way and letting the optic blast do its thing without her body there to interrupt the process. "I never thought you the type to tattle." It's a wry, teasing tone that she uses -- too glib to truly be taking offense, too amused to actually be daring him to do it. Once she starts moving, though, Betsy doesn't stop, and her ninjaflipping puts her in harm's way. "Ah," she notes, before deftly moving again and just barely escaping a swinging, falling robo-limb. Falling into a defensive position, ready to do yet more ninja-flipping as she sizes up the competition, she smiles. "That would have been embarassing, hmm?" As the robot dogpile starts to try and right itself, one of them finds itself beheaded -- by a swift stroke from the suddenly-manifested Psychic Katana. "Just speaking your language, I guess," Scott says as he runs over towards two more robots still standing. "Aren't all you posh British girls supposed to be all rumor-addicts?" he accuses, just as playfully, as he ducks swinging, taking the vulnerable position to quick blow the head clear off, watching it almost actually hit the roof of the danger room. Grinning, he admires his work. Thus far, the execise has been pretty easy. Unfortunately, Scott's chatty hubris is close to being his undoing, as a robot nears, clearly intending for a full-on hug. He just wants to be friends, see. Unfortunately, his hug could crack a few ribs. Meanwhile, Psylocke's pile of robos flails about like hopeless, gigantic turtles, arms flailing up and down. As the head of one of the bots is cut off, the body crumple and then kablooeys; thankfully, the majority of the blast is absorbed by the two bodies atop it. Unfortunately, that also causes a neat effect of physics, causing the remain two bots to fly through the air. They almost look like they're having fun when their arms flop like that. "Oh, we're bred for it," Betsy admits with a quick laugh as her robo-pile explodes into the air. More pressing matters first, though -- "Scott, dear. Duck." Sending her katana back to the mental ether, Psylocke instead focuses her telekinesis elsewhere -- to give the flailing, flying robots a push in the right direction, towards the one sneaking up on her team leader. "Anyway, I've grown out of that phase," Betsy notes. "It was a bit offputting to see all of the machinery turned against me, when I attended my first public function as a Japanese." There's a morbid smile, but it's clear that joking about it mostly Betsy's way of coming to terms with it -- it's not really 'ha ha' funny to her. Scott's fearless leader status doesn't make him stupid leader. When he hears an instruction to duck, he does it, allowing the collection of robots to smash into each other again. This next crumpled pile apparently causes the whole enterprise to shut down, another explosion setting off this pile again. "Got this one," Scott says, waiting for the newest flailing robot to get into position, then blast it in the direction of his final two buddies, spliting them like bowling pins. "That's the English establishment for you," he muses. "Affairs and scandals are all the rage, but don't dare not be white. You truly are a monster, Betsy." Pauses. "Not that...you know...ALL English people are like that," he offers, offering a sheepish look. Oops. Betsy comes out of one of her ninja motions with grace and aplomb, which is a teaspoon of sugar on top of the absolutely baffled look she gives Scott for a moment. The specifics of it are things she keeps to herself -- welcome to Psylocke -- but it's a moment straight out of one of those sitcoms that get their laughs solely through Steve Carrell blurting things out and then people making faces at him. "Yes, well," Betsy says, immediately brushing it aside, as if Scott hadn't said anything at all. "That about takes care of that, doesn't it?" Surveying the holographic robot wreckage, Betsy finds one still twitching, and brings an axe kick down upon its neck like a guillotine -- telekinetic force adding strength to the move, and a minor force field keeping her from shattering her ankle in the process. Dusting her hands off as the thing flickers into oblivion, she looks over at her teammate and smiles. "Why, Scott. You've gotten all sweaty." Scott hangs back while Betsy cleans up the final robot, actually breaking into a short bit of applause as it fades from its ultimately fake existence. He has indeed worked up a bit of a sweat, though he doesn't see terribly winded. "The suit helps," he mentions, tugging a the tight black material of his combat dress as he reaches up to actually pull back the hood. His sandy brown hair is indeed drenched in sweat, and he makes sure to shake it off a bit while he's still well's away from Betsy; no need to get her all wet with his bodily fluids. "Excellent work, as always. Proficent, workmanlike, lethal to robos. An excellent asset if I've ever seen one." If this was a comic book, the following panel would be a shot of Betsy from behind, glancing over her shoulder, arching her back for some reason (probably stretching after the fight to cool down). "I'm flattered," Betsy says, a smile creeping across her face -- one of those enigmatic ones that they train ninjas to do. "It's nice to have my hard work recognized." Psylocke doesn't wink, which is the only thing that keeps that comment ambiguous. As it is, whether she's trying to flirt or not seems totally up in the air -- it could just be her sense of humor, or just her general enjoyment of attention. "Might I suggest a shower, though? As clingy as that suit of yours is, I don't imagine it'll smell like a daisy left to its own devices." "You've been looking at my dry-cleaning bill," Scott says dryly (which, really, is about the only way Scott says anything as he crosses the room toward the exit closest to the showers. "You gonna shower to? Or get a bit more robot-bashing practice in?," he asks, looking over his shoulder as he keys in the exit command, the doors sliding open silently and opening up to the preparations and shower areas. Betsy follows toward the exit, her expression a self-satisfied half-smile. "Oh, the robots have had enough for now, I think," she notes. "Best to leave them to mend their motherboards. Later tonight I'll probably have a fling with a few ninja before dinner, though. Got to keep my appetite strong, and all." Betsy follows through to the shower areas -- and then splits off, toward the section of lockers helpfully marked 'Women.' "Well, Scott. It was fun getting physical with you." Betsy offers a small wave. "We should do it again sometime. Ciao." Scott moves aside as Betsy makes her way towards her own respective shower, standing beneath the 'Men' sign as he nods hs head. "Now if we can just develop and program some ninja-robots, we'll be in real business," he jokes before offering a raise of his hand as way of wave. "Adios, amiga, see you around," he calls out before entering the locker room for a quick shower and change. Category:Logs